Three cool things about Iron Man

Now, obviously I'm talking about the pre-Civil-War Iron Man, and not the Iron Man we've seen since all that started--who, by the way, I fully expect to be revealed when all this is over as a Skrull or a robot or a depraved clone, or at least a victim of sinister mind control.

1. The armor, of course. The armor is cool. Also the notion that the man in the armor is, after all, a human being. (Well, before Extremis came along...hey, could that be the reason for his Civil War arrogance? Hm.)

This was more explicit in the early days of the comic, when Tony was literally trapped in the armor--he couldn't remove the chest plate because the chest plate was what kept his injured heart beating. I always wondered how he managed to maintain his playboy rep after that happened--even given the 60s comic book version of being a playboy (which apparently involved kissing the girl goodnight at her door when the date was over), you'd think any woman he danced with would have figured out that something was up.

2. The romance. Tony had, in the 60s and 70s, a long line of girlfriends. There's a scene in an early book where Tony is missing and a large group of women assembles at his factory to express their concern--the security guard assumes they're his fan club, but no, they're his girlfriends. Of course, the woman he really loved was Pepper Potts*, his trusted secretary. Unfortunately, he could never be with her because of the armor that kept him separate from the world (and handily free from intimacy!), not to mention the issue of her safety if anyone were to find out he was Iron Man. (Oh yeah, back then no one knew that Tony Stark was Iron Man, and he actually put a bit of effort into keeping it that way.) So, lots of angsty angsty angst! Eventually Pepper got tired of waiting for Tony and married Happy Hogan, Tony's bodyguard. Possibly they're still married, I have no idea.

3. He is deeply, deeply flawed. Tony isn't perfect, never has been. Yeah, there's the alcoholism. But he also has a tendency to be very self-focused, to be a workaholic and disappear for days on end--sometimes ignoring his corporate responsibilities.

And when it comes to women, he makes remarkably poor choices--remember in the Avengers when he got together with the just-divorced and emotionally fragile Wasp? His co-worker in the Avengers? Who didn't know he was Iron Man? Captain America, who did know his secret identity, called him on this. Tony did the right thing and told her, and she called off the relationship. (Probably why he didn't tell her in the first place.)

And then there was the one who shot him.

And then there was the super-villain.

Some people should just go to Eharmony.


* Silver Age Soap Opera: When Pepper Potts first appeared, she was a cute, freckle-faced thing with a crush on her boss. Because she was not a glamour queen (his usual "type"), Tony never gave her a second glance other than as a valued employee. Happy Hogan, of course, thought she was the bee's knees, but Pepper was focused on Tony. Now, what one would hope for would be this scenario: Tony eventually sees Pepper's true beauty and goodness and comes around. Nope. No interest from Tony until Pepper went to the beauty shop for a full makeover. Mainly they redid her hair and put makeup over her freckles, I think, but suddenly she was gorgeous and Tony dug her. Happy thought she looked better before the change, but he still liked her because he's that kind of guy. I'm afraid that when it came to women, Silver Age Tony was about as deep as a birdbath. He couldn't be interested in Pepper until she matched his physical ideal.

Happy himself, incidentally, was also a very different character at that time--he made his debut as a washed-up boxer, not terribly bright but terribly stereotypical, with a working-class dialect and a face that had clearly hit the mat a few times. By the time he and Pepper got together, however, he had apparently been to both a plastic surgeon and elocution school (seemingly overnight), because only if he too had the movie-star looks could he be a realistic romantic partner to Pepper. Apparently Tony wasn't the only shallow individual running around Tales of Suspense...